Sunday, November 26, 2017

“Economy Grows by 1.4 %”: Grammar Q and A on a Senator’s Tweet

Senator Shehu Sani wrote the following on Twitter: “Good
news that our economy grows by 1.4%; only that the masses will ask what does
that mean.” Someone called A.S. Aruwa responded thus: “Extinguished senator, I
thought it was “grew”? Don’t you think you should also take the Primary 4
competency test?” Many people on Facebook and Twitter are almost evenly divided
on whether or not Senator Sani is correct. Can you wade in and settle this
grammatical dispute for us?

Answer:

Only a person with insufficient knowledge of English grammar
would defend the senator’s tweet as grammatically correct. In English grammar,
the present tense expresses habitual action, that is, something that happens
all the time. It is grammatically indefensible to say “our economy grows by 1.4%”
because the growth the senator describes isn’t habitual. I looked at the
statistics of Nigeria’s economic growth in the last few years and found wildly
variable rates, and it is entirely conceivable that next year’s growth would be
different from this year’s.

As a
consequence of the dizzying pace of social media communication, the smallness
and inconvenience of the devices on which most social media interactions occur,
the informality of social media platforms, and the need for lexical economy,
especially on Twitter, even careful writers and grammar mavens commit avoidable
errors. I’m not immune from occasional social-media-induced errors of carelessness, too. For instance, on a Facebook status update,
I once wrote “jerked up petrol prices” when I meant to write “jacked up petrol
prices,” among many silly errors I habitually make when I write in haste.

So I’ve learned to not judge people’s grammar on the basis
of what they write on social media. I am writing on this only because scores of
people have asked for my intervention and because I think it’s an opportune
moment to teach a basic grammar lesson. It is not by any means intended to
ridicule Senator Sani.

“Historical present”:
Present tense for past events

Note that although I said the present tense only expresses
habitual action, there is something called the “historical present” in grammar,
which upends this rule. The historical present is the use of the present tense
to express actions that happened in the past. It’s mostly used in creative
fiction. But it’s also used in informal conversational English, especially in
American English.

On April 22, 2010, for instance, a reader asked me the
following question: “When I watch American soaps, they seem to care less about
tenses. Or maybe it’s something beyond me, I don’t know. For instance, a
typical dialogue goes like this: “Daughter: 'dad, do you snore ‘cause I do.
Dad: 'yeah you GET that from me'.” Should not the “get” be GOT? Could you clarify
this for me please?”

And this was my response: “Well, it's not true that
Americans don't care about tenses. They do. The example of the use of present
tense in the dialogue you cited is called the ‘historical present’ in grammar.
It's perfectly legitimate even in British English. It's intended to make a past
event more vivid, or to signal continuity between the past and the present. In
conversational English, it's particularly used with such ‘verbs of communication’
as ‘get’ (as in, ‘OK, I get it: you’re a genius!’), ‘forget’ (as in, ‘I forget
his name’), ‘tell’ (as in, ‘your dad tells me you want to talk to me’). Other
verbs of communication that are expressed in the historical present in speech
are ‘write’ and ‘say.’

“I agree with you, though, that Americans tend to use the
historical present more often than the British do. Of course, the historical
present is rarely used in Nigerian English, except by our creative writers who
deploy it in their fictional narratives. In the hypothetical dialogue you
cited, however, it would be perfectly legitimate to replace ‘get’ with ‘got.’
In fact, in formal contexts, ‘got’ would be especially appropriate.”

I want to add that for the historical present to be
effective and acceptable, it should be consistent. If I am describing my
childhood, for example, using the historical present, that is, using the
present tense to narrate past events in order to lend them vividness, I cannot
slip in and out of the present and past tenses. I should consistently use the
present tense.

In feature writing the historical present is also
permissible, even encouraged. That’s why you find attributions like:

“I love what I do
here,” Danjuma says.

In the above quote and attribution, it’s obvious that
Danjuma doesn’t always say “I love what I do here.” He probably only said it
once to a reporter at some time in the past, but the attribution, that is, “says,”
is in the present tense. That’s perfectly acceptable in feature writing. It
gives intensity and color to narrative writing. In straight, hard-news writing,
however, the attribution would be in the past tense, that is, it would be “Danjuma
said.”

I tell my students that I will only penalize their use of
the historical present in feature writing if they are not consistent with it.
If they write “Smith says” in one place and “Williams said” in another, I would
assume that they are either incompetent or careless users of tenses and
penalize them for it.

Not historical
present, but headlinese

Although the historical present is justified in creative
fiction, feature writing, and conversational English, Senator Sani’s use of “grows”
in his tweet isn’t an instance of the use of the historical present. His tweet
was informed by news stories with headlines that approximate this: “Nigeria's
economy grows 1.4 percent in Q3: data.”

So, apparently, the senator’s tweet was only echoing the
news headlines of the day. That means it should correctly have been written in
the past tense since the senator isn’t a news reporter. Here is what I mean.

You see, every profession has its distinctive style of
English usage. For instance, the turgid, tautological language of lawyers is
called “legalese.” The stilted, pretentiously formal language of government bureaucrats
is called “bureaucratese” or “officialese.” Corporate executives speak and
write “corporatese.” Medical doctors write and speak “medicalese.” And so on
and so forth.

Well, journalists also write and speak journalese, and there
is a branch of journalese called “headlinese” (or headline English), which is
the grammatical and expressive style that is unique to news headlines and which
would be ungrammatical in non-journalistic contexts.

For instance, headline writers almost always use the present
tense to describe past events in order to give them an appearance of recency.
That’s why you read headlines like “Boko Haram kills 20 people in Maiduguri”
even when the killings took place a day earlier, or why you read headlines like
“American economy grows 10 percent in third quarter” even when we are reading
the news of the growth in the fourth quarter, which should make it a past
event.

If you pay close attention to journalistic writing, you’d
notice that although headlines about past events are often written in the
present tense, the main story is always written in the past tense. A headline’s
job is to call attention to a story, to grab the reader by the jugular, and the
psychology of news consumption shows that readers are less likely to read a
story if, from the headline, it comes across as a bygone event. In a way, you
might call the present tense in news headlines as a reportorial marketing gimmick.

Now, there is no reason why someone who isn’t casting a news
headline should use the present tense to describe a past event. In other words,
leave headlinese to journalists. Every truly educated journalist knows that the
present tense in news headlines is ungrammatical, but we insist on using it because
news is a commodity that must be sold in the market, and we know readers
gravitate more to news that is fresh and vivid than to news that is stale and dull.

Interestingly, for some reason, Nigerian English speakers
have been seduced by headlinese in ways other speakers of the English language
aren’t. For example, in headlinese, we dispense with articles (such as “a,” “an,”
and “the”) and conjunctions (such as “and” and “but”) in order to save headline
space in print journalism. So the idiom “in the soup” became “in soup” in news
headlines. Over time, however, Nigerian English speakers stopped saying “he is
in the soup”; they now say “he is in soup” as if they are casting newspaper headlines.

Headlinese also has a fondness for monosyllabic alternatives
to polysyllabic words and for the abbreviation of long words in order to
conserve space. That’s why “slay” is preferred to “murder,” “nab” is preferred
to “arrest,” “cop” is preferred to “police,” “biz man” is used instead of “business
man,” “gov” instead of “governor” or “governorship” (Nigerian headline writers
have invented “guber” as a short form of “gubernatorial”), and so on.

Journalese and headlinese have a long tradition. However,
when someone uses them in contexts that are not journalistic it is legitimate
to describe them as having committed a grammatical error.

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). He also writes two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).

In April 2014 Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.